The first attempt

Southside farm (06.06.10) Sunday
Couldn’t sleep since before 5 am, partly cat hungry and roaming around on the bed, partly uncomfortable, partly noise from birds through open window but also I could tell my mind was beginning to make lists. Lists of what need to be done on the farm and what needs to be done today. I got up 06:45, laid a jersey out on the jersey drier and put a clothes wash on, made myself some detox tea, washed the dishes from yesterday and the day before, read and rated two 6page stories on webook. My short story submission is mainly ‘so-so’, 3 people say it needs work and I suppose it does. It’s about a raindrop on a spiders web but now I see in an ad on tele that there is a raindrop that starts in a rainbow falls down and goes through an underground stream, I can’t remember what the ad for or what happens to the drop of water but it makes me wonder if it was inspired by Dewy.

Anyway I am writing because it looks as though our offer for the purchase of Southside farm has been accepted. Two Mondays ago Richard phoned the Estate Agent and told him that we need a decision on the land by that Friday or we would withdraw our offer. We heard nothing that week or on Friday. On Saturday we went to look at two other bits of land. One was 55acers which we may have gone into a shared buy with another family in Astrids’ class but it was too much land for us, too short a time to organise things in and in the end I said to Rich that he wanted it mainly for the bees and was there a good space for them, well not really. It was just too much for us to get our heads round and there was potential access problems too. We also saw 7acrs near Tetbury. It had a gate and stonewalling most of the way round but no shelters. The grass was long and it had just been raining so Rich and I waded through the grass after climbing over the gate that had barbed wire over the top. Our knees got wet over our wellies. Rich liked the land. He said he was beginning to get excited again. There are lots of rape fields close by and a stream at the bottom but no privacy as the wall could be looked over from the road. I couldn’t quite transfer the vivid mental pictures that I had for Southside on to that field but I tried. Rich spent a lot of the weekend deliberating about what to offer on the land.

I was on leave this last week as it was half term and Cheryl was on leave. On Tuesday Rich phoned and said he had been asked if he still wanted Southside, but at 5thousand more than we had offered. Well we had thought of offering less if they hadn’t sold in a few weeks time but I think, after seeing the other pieces of land plus one near a freeway, Rich had come to appreciate the work that had been done on the property. One major concern in that the shed did not having planning permission.

We went to look at the property again yesterday. I’m calling it ‘Southside Farm’, the sign used to say ‘Southside Stables’ but the ‘Stables’ part has rubbed off. The owner and the estate agent met us there. We had climbed the gates about half an hour before as Rich wanted to make a list of all the stuff that is there. Astrid and I walked around the place taking photo’s and picking some of the wild flowers for identification. I was trying to identify ragwort so we could pull it up if we got any horses to stay. The place is big and there will always be loads of work to do. I hope we can keep the shed it is a lovely big shelter if nothing else. There are 2 big containers that are going to be left as well as some huge white plastic water containers (empty), not sure what to do with them. There are also various other water containers around with green water in them. A diesel container is going to stay and the owner will bring the diesel generator that he did not want to leave on the property, not sure why. Someone is living in a caravan that is in the shed. Rich hopes that there will be no problem with them leaving. There is permission for the ramshackle static caravan, it has a big gas container outside it to provide gas for cooking and heating. In it is a small burner which I hope will stay. There are some piles of air bricks around that can come in handy and two stables with some type of room in between.

Well it is not definitely ours yet though the owner would like to complete in four weeks from tomorrow. We need to have the mortgage money come through by then and some basic checks done by the lawyers. Rich spent a long time last night emailing the solicitor with lots of details. Despite my vivid pictures of living there and having daffodils along the track side it is hard to believe that it may actually happen. A dream may come true!